detail of dividing DNA strand with texts by Irigaray and Nietzsche
detail of translated Nietzsche text
detail of translated Irigaray text in small lightbox
The texts say:
And the one doesn't stir without the other. But we do not move together. When one of us comes into the world, the other goes underground. When the one carries life, the other dies. And what I wanted from you, Mother, was this: that in giving me life, you still remain alive.
- Luce Irigaray, from Et l'une ne bouge pas sans l'autre
It is even less a question of a will to live; for life is merely a special case of the will to power; -- it is quite arbitrary to assert that everything strives to enter into this form of the will to power.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, from The Will to Power
Species Life addresses cultural codification of the biological body, extended into biotechnological manipulation of the "natural." It represents an exaggerated gender stratification in the form of quotes from Luce Irigaray and Friedrich Nietzsche. The texts are inscribed in their original languages, French and German, on separating strands of DNA shown in the form of familiar textbook genetic imagery -- colourful, hard-edged, clinical. In an ironic way, these philosophical inscriptions picture sexual difference as a deep biological coding.